Stone Circle

Folklore

Maybe you'd half expect the following experience, as it is told, to happen to someone like Colin Wilson - after all, he has written extensively and sympathetically about things that go bump in the night.

He was visiting Boscawen-un in 1975 with some friends, and left them in the circle while he nipped off, hoping to visit a nearby hillock and the 'Giant's Footprint'. I can only assume this would be at Creeg Tol. He was trying to be quick because his friends needed to catch a train, so finding that it was taking him longer than he thought to battle through all the bracken, he decided to turn back before he actually reached the landmark. He clearly saw the direction he had come from, though the circle was not in view, so he plodded downhill.
Then, to his own surprise, he found himself lost. He veered left to the path at the bottom of the hill, and climbing over a wall found himself in a strange field altogether. It took him 'half an hour' to find his way back to the circle, via winding up at the main road - which was in completely the wrong direction. I mean if you look at a map the path goes directly from Creeg Tol to the Circle, so it does seem a bit peculiar.

Wilson put his experience down to the crossing point of ley lines - well afterall, this is a node on the major 'Michael and Mary' cross-England leys, y'know.

Maybe that was it - or maybe he was 'pixie-led' - a common enough experience in the presence of the little people. Either you'll find yourself utterly lost in a place you know well, or perhaps you'll find yourself unable to find your way out of a quite ordinary space like a field, and spend your afternoon wandering round and round.

I'm going for the pixie explanation myself. Though it is possible he just got confused. On my own visit I liked the way the circle only appears right at the last minute when you burst through the gap in the hedge - perhaps it is easy to miss unless you're heading in just the right direction. But that's just boring.

(Story described in Patrick Harpur's 'Astray with the Fairies' in Fortean Times 142 - PH having read Colin Wilson's 'Mysteries')